Revlon Facets of Fuchsia Funky French

Hi all.

Happy....Monday?

Guess what? I FINALLY have a mani to show you guys that I'm actually relatively happy with!! I took off that Zoya funky french about an hour after posting it because the layers of polish started to seriously bug me. You know how when you have like 8 coats of crap on your nails and they just feel thick and gross and gnarly? That was my dilemma. So I removed it all about 5 minutes before I made an hour drive to visit boyfriend for the weekend, and was stuck with nakey nails.

Nekkie nails are not fun for me. I hate the texture of them. They always feel like they're going to break at any second. That's why I like to always have them polished - they just FEEL stronger. So after D left for work on Saturday night, the very first thing I did was sit down and do my nails (yes.... I may have brought a bottle of polish and top coat with me....). Mind you, this is a house full of men. So I sat down on my knees and polished my nails on his end table. No clean up, no cuticle cream....nothing. But I sat down, and put on two coats of China Glaze Gothic Lolita. And it was grand - I didn't feel like every nail was going to splinter into a thousand pieces anymore! But.... it was just so....BORING!

So yesterday, after we celebrated Father's Day, I sat down and did another funky french. For this one, I cut pieces of tape on a diagonal and placed them in the center of my nails. I used a coat of Revlon Facets of Fuchsia over top of the tape, and boy do I love the way these two colors go together!

Can you believe I've never used this bottle of Revlon Facets of Fuchsia?! I mean....ever. I've used Mom's bottle of DL Bad Romance, but never used this one. What a mistake that was, because I love this! I thought it needed a little more pizazz, so I added some silver lines with a striper brush. But in retrospect, I wish I'd just left them off. It was much sharper before I put the striping polish on, and the Kiss striper I used was so old and think and glumpy that I couldn't get a crisp line. Le sigh. I still like the way it looks :)

Hope you all had a fantastic weekend, back to the grind today :(

Pink Wednesday - Wicked Roses

Hi girls. Sorry for neglecting you lately. Still trying to get in the swing of this work thing. I swear, I get up at 6am, go to work for 8 hours, come home, have about 4 hours to myself, go to bed, then do it all again. There's not enough hours in the day to do my nails and blog :(

Anywho, I finally found some time to sit down and do my nails last night (yay!). I used China Glaze Wicked Style as my base....which is definitely not this orangey-red. Wicked Style is much more of a berry pink color in real life, but of course it has to be a nuisance and throw off the color balance of my camera. And of course I'm too much of a noob to know how to alter the colors....so just pretend, mmkay?

I wanted to do some sort of quick nail art over top of this so I could still have some time to myself. I decided on Konading, but the design and polish I picked smeared together so I decided to do some freehand roses. I've tried this once before, and they didn't come out too well. This one looked funky at first, but after I painted the leaves on I think it really came together. The roses are made with Revlon Candy, Essie French Affair, and Zoya Erika. The leaves are China Glaze Starboard with China Glaze Entourage for the highlights. I finished with one coat of China Glaze Fairy Dust (duh) and a coat of Seche Vite and voila!

I'm actually liking the way this came out, considering I was kind of hurrying myself along. And I actually did it on all ten nails...shocking! I can't get away with only doing one now that I have to actually go in public and talk to real live people ;)

Hope you are all having a happy hump day! Only two days til the weekend (it's weird that I have to count down to it again now after being unemployed for so long....ha ha)!!

Icing glitters - part 2

Today's post is the remaining 2 Icing glitter polishes I picked up at Icing prior to Christmas

First up is Birthday Beyotch.  Ok the name - love it or hate it?  I think I'm kinda liking it.  At first glance it's another one of those multi color glitters in a clear base.  But check out the bottle shot.   It has SO MANY colors in it.   It's like a circus exploded in the bottle!

I'm showing it as a jelly sandwich today with Revlon Grapefruit Fizz (which was part of their scented polish LE line last summer), but this would really be spectacular over a black base.  Unfortunately I didn't get many good shots of this as my light box really sucks (it's too short and I can't get my tripod into it and end up having to contort into all sorts of unnatural positions to take pics)

Then we have my favorite of the 4 - Glitterati.  It boasts small holographic glitter with large fuschia hex glitter.  Here I've layered it over Sally Hansen Pat on the Black, which is a dark vampy plum color.  I wish the photos accurately depicted the holo sparkle this had!  Then just for fun I mattified it with Essie Matte About You.  The middle picture is intentionally left blurry to show the holo glitter.

Application was pretty much the same as yesterday's swatches.  What do you think of these glitters?

It just wouldn't be the holidays..

without Elle's Spell.

We swatched this lovely earlier in the year but I had to share it again now that the holidays have rolled around.

I started with a base coat of Revlon Devil's Lure, which is one of my favorite dark vampy red (almost black) polishes.   You can find it swatched on our blog.

Then I applied one coat of Barielle Elle's Spell, which is a gorgeous flakey in a sheer red base.  You can use it on it's own without layering, but you'll need multiple coats to build the opacity.  Behold - instant holiday cheer!

In sunlight..

And in shade..



Day 12: Stripes (Fruit Stripe Gum!)

Where are my 90's kids any kid that remembers this? This one's for you!

Fruit Stripe Gum! Do you guys remember it? The flavor in it lasted all of about three minutes, but it was still so exciting. What can beat fruit colored gum that comes with TATTOOS?! I think nothing. I loved this stuff as a kid and thought it would be fun to do my stripe mani to look like the sticks of gum.

The base colors I used are (from L to R): China Glaze Entourage, China Glaze Lemon Fizz, China Glaze Solar Power, and Revlon Sheer Rose. I used acrylic paint for the stripes (polish was too hard to use).

It's funny -- the stripes didn't turn out very neat but I almost think that makes it look more realistic! They just look so yummy :)

Ahh...the good old days. I still listen to my 90's music and I'm not ashamed :)

Day 10: Gradient Nails featuring Teenage Dream

I struggled for a while thinking about what to do for gradient nails. I wasn't feeling up to doing a full color gradient, so I decided to do a glitter gradient a la The Polished Perfectionist.

I started with three coats of Revlon Top Speed Candy. It's your regular old medium pink creme polish. One thing I find about these Top Speed polishes is that they seem to be pretty streaky -- I have another light colored Top Speed polish that is hard to get opaque because it is so streaky. Anyone else have that problem?

Anyway, then I sponged on OPI Teenage Dream at the base of my nails. I really like the way this looks as opposed to glitter fading down from the tips! Plus this mani is simple and that's what I need after a few busy manis in a row. ;)

Do you prefer glitter gradients from the tip down or the base up, like this one?

Revlon Smoky Canvas

Smoky Canvas is part of Revlon's Expressionist LE line and is a putty grey creme.  I had a rather unusual problem with application on this one.

The first coat went on a little bit streaky but was manageable.  The second was extremely streaky and the more I tried to even it out the worse it got.  I'm not sure if I didn't let the first coat dry completely enough or it was a formula issue.  I think I ended up using 3 coats of this one to get it opaque and even.  Be sure to allow extra drying time in between coats.

The color is a nice neutral, work-appropriate grey.  It just didn't look good on my skin tone.  Maybe it leans a little too yellow for me.  The top coat disguised a lot of my application issues and made this a wearable mani for me.  Maybe some stamping would help me like it more.

Revlon Desire and Klassicolor Fuchsia Glitter

I have swatched this color before, but revisited it for our series of breast cancer awareness manicures.  Revlon Desire is a sheer jelly that dries semi-matte.  It's a little patchy so I applied 3 coats.

As a topcoat I used another one of the strange Klassicolor glitters that I got from a friend that works at Walgreens.  It's called simply Fuchsia Glitter and its a pink base with small pink and silver glitter and some larger hex silver glitters.  The glitter is hard to apply and get even and tends to be thick and goopy.  It does give it some sparkle though!

Savvy Deja Blue and Revlon Blue Mosaic

Omg.  LOVE.

I didn't really anticipate loving this polish as much as I do.  I thought it was another knockoff of DL Across the Universe but I really am happy with this one.

I wanted a dark color underneath to give the glitter a solid background, so I started off with one coat of Savvy Deja Blue which I have swatched elsewhere on this blog.  Then over the top of that I applied 2 coats of Blue Mosaic.

Blue Mosaic is a densely packed blue microglitter with large blue and green hex glitters.  I used two coats and had nearly complete coverage.  It applies surprisingly well for a glitter.  The polish levels well and I didn't notice problems with glitter placement.  This one has so much depth - it reminds me of the bottom of a blue tiled swimming pool.   I absolutely love this.   It's one of those keep-gazing-at-your-nails polishes.

I'll definitely have to use the foil method to remove it, but it's gonna be so worth it!



Revlon Starry Pink

Happy Pink Wednesday everyone!

Today I have Revlon Starry Pink from the fall limited edition Expressionist collection.  It consists of small silver glitter and large silver hex glitter in a light pink base.  My bottle was a tad on the thick side, but it applied smoothly and dried fast.  It seems like Revlon's formula has improved a lot lately.  I've applied it over 2 coats of Essie French Affair.

HAUL-o-ween!

These are our purchases from the last 2-3 weeks.

Ulta had a BOGO sale on Butter London last week, so we picked up two lacquers.  The lucky winners were HRH and Wallis.  Amanda will have a review of HRH going up later in the week.

At Meijer I found some novelty Halloween polishes.  I knew by looking at these bottles they weren't really going to be practical to use because of the bottle shape.  And I was right, application was really difficult because the lid is so small.  Coverage was ok.  Voodoo is a semi-matte red jelly with red microglitter and Toxic is a medium green shimmer almost leaning toward a foil-y finish.

This is 2 coats with no top coat

And this is a coat of Rush High Speed top coat over it.

Here is 2 coats of Toxic - no top coat

Phantom Frights Jack O'Lantern bottles.  Aren't these cute?  They are a little more practical than the coffin shaped bottles.  They had lots of different colors and textures - several neons and glitters and even a mini set, which I impulse bought and gave to Amanda.

 

All polishes are layered over Sinful Black on Black unless otherwise noted.  They don't have names so I'll just show you the pictures.  This was the first one to catch my eye as I love glitters and holos.  I originally thought this was a clear base with holographic glitter and large bat glitters in it.  But upon closer examination, I see that it is, in fact, holographic crescent moons.  So cute!

Next is a small multi colored glitter in a clear base.  I could actually see myself using this one for more than just the Halloween season.  It looks really pretty matt-i-fied too.

Next is a clear base with holographic bar glitter.  This polish is plaqued by the same problem other bar glitters have.  The bars tend to migrate around the nail so uniform coverage is difficult.  The base is also really thick and goopy.  Might need some thinning out.

Here is the only polish out of my haul I didn't swatch over black.  This is applied over the top of Wet n Wild Buffy the Violet Slayer (which looks blue in the pictures but is actually a vivid violet shimmer).  This polish has a medium purple base with holographic glitter and blue flakies.  Again, it's much more purple than the picture makes it look.  

Lastly is a clear base with black and orange bar glitter. Black probably wasn't the best color to layer it over because you can't see the black glitter.  Again, its really goopy and the glitter is hard to place.  It ends up really thick and uneven and you'll need to put a top coat on to try to even out the surface.

And here is one of my most anticipated lemmings of the fall season.  This is the Revlon limited edition Expressionist collection.  I'm so excited to wear these!  The colors are (L to R) Facets of Fuchsia (which is a Deborah Lippman Bad Romance dupe), Smoky Canvas, Blue Mosaic and Starry Pink.  Look for reviews of these coming up real soon!